Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy (BPH) affects 75% of men over the age of 45. Of course, medicine is primarily into treatment of the symptom and ignores the more obvious underlying causes. I’d like to share with you what I feel is the best overall treatment of this condition, and then what I do at the office to eliminate the problem in most of my male patients complaining of BPH.
What Is BPH?
The prostate starts off in the embryo as the vestigial uterus. In males it drops into position around the base of the urethra. The urethra carries urine from the urinary bladder through the penis to the outside. When the prostate becomes swollen it reduces the force of the flow of urination; can makes starting and stopping of the stream more difficult; often affects sexual performance negatively; sometimes creates an inability to delay urination; and most often produces an increase in nocturnal urination. Getting up more than once a night to urinate is an important early warning sign of BPH. If you are experiencing these symptoms, a prostate exam and laboratory testing such as a prostate specific antigen test (PSA) is the medically recommended procedure. If the BPH diagnosis is made, drugs are usually the first approach. If the PSA is high, a biopsy is usually suggested, as BPH is a precursor of prostate cancer. All drugs have side effects, including those to manage the initial stages of BPH, and when taken long term pose an ever increasing risk. Natural products provide a safer and less expensive approach.
How To Reduce BPH With Supplements
In many European countries, Saw Palmetto is a treatment of choice by the medical community. Saw Palmetto is a saw grass derivative that reduces the inflammation and swelling of the prostate allowing more normal function. Treatment with Saw Palmetto should start with a push dose, or high initial dose. I usually suggest four of the 500mg capsules a day if nightly urination amounts to three or less trips. I usually suggest eight of the 500mg caps a day if nightly urination amounts to 4 or more trips. Symptoms will usually lessen quickly, and when only one trip a night becomes the norm, it’s time to start cutting back on the dosage a little at a time. When the symptoms start to re-occur it means you have cut the dosage back too far, and you increase it a little at a time until you are only up to urinate once a night.
Restful sleep is critical to good health, and sleep interrupted by multiple nightly excursions to the toilet has a significant negative impact on ones total health. BPH therefore contributes to a growing number of health problems attributed to aging as a result of insufficient rest.
Other helpful products for the prostate are Iodine/Iodide supplements. Many men with BPH also have a clinical or sub-clinical under active thyroid problem (hypo-thyroidism). The thyroid and the prostate are the two thirstiest organs for iodine, and any shortage of that mineral will cause problems. In my previous newsletter article, you will find a test for Iodine sufficiency that is cheap and can be easily done at home.
Zinc is also an important mineral for optimum prostate function. If you have white spots on your fingernails it suggests that a zinc deficiency is present. Usually 30mg of supplemental zinc a day for a month or two will correct this imbalance. Prostate glandular is another supplement that is specific for BPH. Three to six tablets a day has proven helpful in restoring normalcy to the prostate.
To reduce the inflammation of BPH, unsaturated fatty acids in the form of Borage Oil, Flax Seed Oil, or fish oil as Omega 3-EPA is helpful. A good indicator of oil soluble nutrient deficiency is dryness of the skin, especially between the ankles and the knees. I usually suggest that patients start taking one supplement a day for two weeks, and if the skin is still dry to increase it. Then every two weeks increase the dosage until the skin is no longer flaky, and that will be your maintenance dose.
These are the things that can control BPH successfully, for most people without medication. However, even more important is eliminating some of the causative factors behind this epidemic problem.
Getting At Some Of The Cause
Obviously, BPH has a multitude of contributing causes. Some are easily manageable and some are not, so let’s discuss the most important ones of the more easily manageable underlying causes. As you all know, I’m an old man, and had BPH symptoms myself many, many years ago. I controlled the problem with the supplements suggested above until I learned what I’m about to share with you next. It took me a few years of eating correctly before I could wean myself off the supplements, but now I seldom get up to urinate at night and I no longer take any supplemental help for the problem.
The main source of BPH, and subsequently the cancer that follows, in my opinion, gathered from a fairly thorough perusal of the research some two decades ago when I was in the midst of symptoms, is sex hormones. In particular, female steroid sex hormones. It has been the policy of the huge agribusiness farms to put female steroid sex hormones (estrogens) into the feed for steers, chickens, and swine so they will continue to eat heartily and put on weight even under the most inhumane conditions… and it works. Unfortunately, the astonishing rise in breast, uterine, ovarian, and prostate cancer coincides with this agribusiness policy. All of these aforementioned organs have an abundance of receptor sites for these hormones and are therefore extremely susceptible to any increases in estrogen, phytoestrogen, or pseudo-estrogen load. Add to this the increased use of soy products, which are loaded with phytoestrogens, and plastics which ablate pseudo-estrogens, and we have a considerable increase in steroid hormone body burden.
My Advice To You And Your Family…
Discontinue all soy products (I have written newsletters on this topic), and stop eating food prepared, stored, or packaged in plastic. Start using glass bottles for your water and especially baby water and formula. Probably most importantly, start buying grass fed and grass finished beef, and natural free range chicken. I haven’t researched an avenue for clean pork as it is something I gave up years ago. Nevertheless, if you’re a pork fan, find a farmer that raises a small herd and buy direct. I purchase my meat, and I eat a lot of it, from Skyview Farm.
